Data shows Middle Eastern and black drivers more likely to be pulled over by Ottawa police

Ottawa police disproportionately pull over Middle Eastern and black drivers, according to newly released data that the Ontario Human Rights Commission said is “consistent with racial profiling.”

Yet as police Monday revealed the results from a two-year project undertaken as part of a human rights settlement after a then-18-year-old man alleged he was stopped by police in a Mercedes Benz simply for being black, both the team of researchers that conducted the study and Ottawa police Chief Charles Bordeleau said the results in no way “prove” racial profiling by officers.

Data from traffic stops, collected by Ottawa police officers and analyzed by a team of York University researchers, shows that people who Ottawa officers think are Middle Eastern are 3.3 times more likely to be pulled over than their percentage of the population, while people who Ottawa officers think are black are 2.3 times more likely to be pulled over than their percentage of the population.

In a statement released by the commission, the OHRC said the findings from the Traffic Stop Race Data Collection Project would challenge all forces to “acknowledge the systemic nature of racial profiling.”

Bordeleau said he wasn’t surprised that the commission made those statements, but that the Ottawa force was taking the lead in tackling the difficult issue of racial profiling.

“The York University research team has pointed out that the report does not conclude racial profiling. I recognize that some may jump to these conclusions,” he said. “These conclusions would be wrong.”

Bordeleau conceded that the study shows “some variances” in the perceived races of those officers stop and that the force needs to understand the reasons for the differences.

The data, however, only measures what officers perceived a driver’s race to be and in only 11.4 per cent of traffic stops was race perceived prior to the driver being pulled over.

Bordeleau highlighted a tension that the data may not show — that the community wants police presence in areas where crime is occurring but also doesn’t want to be subject to over-policing.

Bordeleau said Ottawa residents want the police to be active in hotspot areas, respond to crime, shootings and gang activity. Increased deployment in high-priority neighbourhoods, which are often more ethnically diverse, means more officers will conduct traffic stops in them, Bordeleau said. Further data on the stops — the demographics of neighbourhoods, when stops are occurring, socio-economic issues — is needed to find out how those unaccounted for factors affect the data that’s been collected, he said.

“The reality is that we don’t yet have the answers to those important questions.”

The data collection project began in 2013 after an arbitrated settlement between the police service and the OHRC. Chad Aiken said he was pulled over for driving an expensive car while being black. Aiken has since maintained to the Citizen that he continued to be stopped in Ottawa, and wasn’t being ticketed even when committing infractions.

The data collected shows some of his experience is likely happening to others. Indigenous, black, Middle Eastern and other racialized minorities “experienced disproportionately high incidences of ‘final (no action)’ outcomes in stops.” These groups were, therefore, overrepresented in the 14.2 per cent of traffic stops in which people were pulled over but had nothing happen to them.

Nearly all of the traffic stops — 97 per cent — were for traffic infractions. Less than three per cent were for suspicious and criminal activity.

Yet the data was never meant to answer the question of whether the force racially profiles; it simply can’t measure intent, but can potentially make visible implicit bias, said researcher Lesley Jacobs. The most researchers could say was that the data was both consistent with the possibility of racial profiling and with the possibility of legitimate policing.

Bordeleau said the project was undertaken “because there were questions and concerns among some in our community about bias and racial profiling that we couldn’t ignore.”

Indeed, those concerns, which came to a head in the 2012 settlement, are once again front and centre for the force after the July in-custody death of 37-year-old Somali Canadian Abdirahman Abdi and the public Facebook comments a forensic identification officer made on a Citizen article about the death of Inuk artist Annie Pootoogook.

The decision to charge Sgt. Chris Hrnchiar with two counts of discreditable conduct under the Police Services Act for comments that suggested Pootoogook was the architect of her own misfortune for simply being aboriginal and being satisfied with being a drunk or drug addict became public the day before additional concerns about racial profiling would be levied against the force.

Bordeleau said Monday that racial profiling exists both in society and in policing but that “it has no place in either.”

“Racial profiling is not tolerated within the Ottawa Police Service.”

Rather than proving racial profiling, the study instead proves how seriously the force takes the issue, Bordeleau said.

He commended his officers who themselves collected the data by indicating their perceived race of the drivers they pulled over. “They did their job,” Bordeleau said. “They showed their professionalism. And I have full confidence in them and I am very proud of them.”

Bordeleau went further in an email sent to all officers Monday. In it he wrote: “We will no doubt hear criticism about this report, but it doesn’t shake our belief in you. Policing is facing the pressures of change and our work is being scrutinized, whether through more oversight or new rules around things like street checks.”

Bordeleau said that the force, too, needs to review the findings, the largest study of its kind in the country, and then move forward with the community.

Together, they have “more work to do,” Bordeleau said.

The OHRC called on Ottawa police to “immediately implement” the report’s recommendations — do further study to find out why this disproportionality is occurring, increase police-community consultations, continue the collection of data and make it publicly available — and also called for the province to mandate race-based data collection by police services across Ontario.

Police union president Matt Skof voiced concerns on whether the “Middle Eastern” racial category that was pre-set in the study became a catch-all for officers who had to perceive race and resolve ambiguity without asking.

Skof, however, did not mince words when discussing what he called the “irresponsible” and “prejudicial” comments of the OHRC, which he likened to a “petulant child.”

Skof said it was disappointing to hear the commission make findings that the researchers themselves were not prepared to make, and said it showed the commission’s own prejudice when dealing with police forces.

Police board chair Coun. Eli El-Chantiry said the project was the result of several years of work and was an “important milestone” in the relationship between police and the community in the city.

El-Chantiry said the board is committed to respecting human rights and bias-free policing. “Our communities expect and deserve respectful service without disparity in the treatment of different race groups.”

The board will review the results and recommendations of the study, and then develop what El-Chantiry called a “multi-year action plan” within the next six months.

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